and every single poll shows that the republicans are losing the debate, both on the fiscal cliff and on the tax issue. they're losing the issue politically. i think they know they're losing the issue politically, and i think they know at some point they are going to have to concede a deal that are largely on president obama's terms. but they're also losing the argument with economists. if you consider what president obama put forward yesterday with a $1.6 trillion in tax increases mostly on the wealthy, every single economic study has shown that that will have virtually no impact on gdp growth. the congressional budget office did a study that showed that it would decrease gdp growth by 0.1%. virtually no impact. republicans didn't like that cbo study although they always like the cbo. so they went to crs to see if they could do another study that would differ from the cbo study. crs confirmed it. all the economists are unanimous if we're going to try to go after the debt, now that we have virtually 3% gdp growth, we want do it in a way that's least damaging to the economy. almost all